This seminar addresses the history of slavery and of the law of enslavement, primarily in mainland North America but also in comparative perspective. We will read the field’s classics, and its most recent accounts. Our emphasis will be on slavery as a labor system, but we will also examine slavery as a social condition, and the laws that applied in both respects. We will attempt to understand slavery’s North American origins, its legal and moral justifications, its expansion, its politics, and its demise. Our goal will be to achieve a thorough and complete grounding in the field’s formative literatures through reading and extended discussion. Students are expected to share in the responsibility for leading discussion and to write a 30 page final paper on a topic of their choice within the parameters of the seminar. This final paper could take the form of an academic paper or a detailed research proposal for a major grant or fellowship.

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Readers:No reader.

Books:Required Books are in blue

A slaveholders' unionGeorge William Van ClevePublisher: Chicago ; University of Chicago Press, 2010.ISBN: 9780226846682Copyright Date: To Be DeterminedPrice: $23.02Note: prices are sampled from internet bookstores. Folletts prices are unavailable at this time.

Bonds of AllianceBrett Rushforth, Publisher: The University of North Carolina PressISBN: 9780807835586Copyright Date: To Be DeterminedPrice: 25Note: prices are sampled from internet bookstores. Ned's prices are unavailable at this time.

Double characterAriela J. GrossPublisher: Athens : University of Georgia Press, 2006.ISBN: 9780820328607Copyright Date: To Be DeterminedPrice: 7.67Note: prices are sampled from internet bookstores. Ned's prices are unavailable at this time.

Freedom Bound: Law, Labor, and Civic Identity in Colonizing English America, 1580-1865Christopher TomlinsEdition: 2010Publisher: Cambridge University PressISBN: 9780521137775Copyright Date: To Be DeterminedPrice: 35.00Note: prices are sampled from internet bookstores. Ned's prices are unavailable at this time.

Freedom's Debt: The Royal African Company and the Politics of the Atlantic Slave Trade, 1672-1752William PettigrewEdition: 2013Publisher: University of North Carolina PressISBN: 9781469611815Copyright Date: To Be DeterminedPrice: 40.00Note: prices are sampled from internet bookstores. Ned's prices are unavailable at this time.

River of Dark Dreams: Slavery and Empire in the Cotton KingdomWalter JohnsonEdition: 2013Publisher: Belknap HarvardISBN: 9780674045552Copyright Date: To Be DeterminedPrice: 35.00Note: prices are sampled from internet bookstores. Ned's prices are unavailable at this time.

Slavery and social deathOrlando PattersonPublisher: Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 1982.ISBN: 9780674810822Copyright Date: To Be DeterminedPrice: 26Note: prices are sampled from internet bookstores. Ned's prices are unavailable at this time.

Slavery: A Problem in American Institutional and Intellectual LifeStanley Elkins, Publisher: University of Chicago PressISBN: 9780226204734Copyright Date: To Be DeterminedPrice: 0.99Note: prices are sampled from internet bookstores. Ned's prices are unavailable at this time.

Soul by soulWalter JohnsonPublisher: Cambridge, Mass. ; Harvard University Press, 1999.ISBN: 9780674821484Copyright Date: To Be DeterminedPrice: 5.61Note: prices are sampled from internet bookstores. Ned's prices are unavailable at this time.

Southern slavery and the law, 1619-1860Thomas D. MorrisPublisher: Chapel Hill : University of North Carolina Press, c1996.ISBN: 9780807822388Copyright Date: To Be DeterminedPrice: 18Note: prices are sampled from internet bookstores. Ned's prices are unavailable at this time.

The Peculiar InstitutionKenneth M. Stampp, Publisher: VintageISBN: 9780394702537Copyright Date: To Be DeterminedPrice: 0.67Note: prices are sampled from internet bookstores. Ned's prices are unavailable at this time.

The claims of kinfolkDylan C. PenningrothPublisher: Chapel Hill ; University of North Carolina Press, c2003.ISBN: 9780807854761Copyright Date: To Be DeterminedPrice: 5.5Note: prices are sampled from internet bookstores. Ned's prices are unavailable at this time.

Tumult and silence at Second CreekWinthrop D. JordanPublisher: Baton Rouge : Louisiana State University Press, 1995.ISBN: 9780807120392Copyright Date: To Be DeterminedPrice: 4.91Note: prices are sampled from internet bookstores. Ned's prices are unavailable at this time.